If I had only had this advice at the beginning of my PhD, I would have saved myself a lot of hassle....
Also, the above advice would suggest, for instance, that we should use SAP's ridiculous, bloated crapware to manage human resources etc... Sometimes the multibillioner dollar companies fail.
Well, "learn from it" and "use the crapware" can mean different things. I've found useful the rule of thumb that "someone else once had your problem and you should find out what they did, even if they failed to solve it".
The best technique I use for "being careful" is to imagine the ways something could go wrong (e.g., my fingers slip and I drop something, I trip on my feet/cord/stairs, I get distracted for second, etc.). By imagining the specific ways something can go wrong, I feel much less likely to make a mistake.
In the HUGR, I've included the advice "learn the sad stories of your lab as soon as possible" -- the most painful mistakes others, past and present, have made in the course of action. Helpful as a specific "ways things can go wrong" list.
I won't be able to respond individually to everyone, but thank you all for your contributions! If anything else comes to mind, please leave more quotes -- I'll check back periodically.
One key meta mistake you see a LOT in computational biology is people not seeking out the proper expertise they need. I and countless other people have wasted months re inventing existing tools because I had no idea they existed, which is turn was because there were no experienced researchers around me with the relevant expertise to tell me.
Indeed! I found this to be an extremely helpful resource w/r/t seeking out "meta-expertise":
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/jesse.shapiro/research/CodeAndData.pdf
Key quote: "Here is a good rule of thumb: If you are trying to solve a problem, and there are multi-billion-dollar firms whose entire business model depends on solving the same problem, and there are whole courses at your university devoted to how to solve that problem, you might want to figure out what the experts do and see if you can't learn something from it."
Thanks for the suggestion! We've been thinking about this. See also my post Can an online peer group substitute? at the Davidson Institute forum for parents. It seems as though it would take a long time to get enough users for it to pay for itself, but maybe it could eventually become self-sustaining.
Have you looked at the Johns Hopkins/Center for Talented Youth forums at https://cogito.cty.jhu.edu? I think you need a special login to get on, and I forgot my info long ago, but the community still seems to be of a respectable size.
Hello, Less Wrong!
This seems like a community with a relatively high density of people who have worked in labs, so I'm posting here.
I recently finished the first draft of something I'm calling "The Hapless Undergraduate's Guide to Research" (HUGR). (Yes, "HUGS" would be a good acronym, but "science" isn't specific enough.) Not sure if it will ever be released, or what the final format will be, but I'll need more things to put in it whatever happens.
Basically, this is meant to be an ever-growing collection of mistakes that new researchers (grad or undergrad) have made while working in labs. Hundreds of thousands of students around the English-speaking world do lab work, and based on my own experiences in a neuroscience lab, it seems like things can easily go wrong, especially when rookie researchers are involved. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes, but it would be nice to have a source of information around that people (especially students) might read, and which might help them watch out for some of the problems with the biggest pain-to-ease-of-avoidance ratios.
Since my experience is specifically in neuroscience, and even more specifically in "phone screening and research and data entry", I'd like to draw from a broad collection of perspectives. And, come to think of it, there's no reason to limit this to research assistants--all scientists, from CS to anthropology, are welcome!
So--what are some science mistakes you have made? What should you have done to prevent them, in terms of "simple habits/heuristics other people can apply"? Feel free to mention mistakes from other people that you've seen, as long as you're not naming names in a damaging way. Thanks for any help you can provide!
And here are a couple of examples of mistakes I've gathered so far:
--Research done with elderly subjects. On a snowy day, the sidewalk froze, so subjects couldn't be screened for a day, because no one thought to salt the sidewalks in advance. Lots of scheduling chaos.
--Data entry being done for papers with certain characteristics. Research assistants and principal investigator were not on the same page regarding which data was worth collecting. Each paper had to be read 7 or 8 times by the time all was said and done, and constructing the database took six extra weeks.
--A research assistant clamped a special glass tube too tight, broke it, and found that replacements would take weeks to come in... well, there may not be much of a lesson in that, but maybe knowing equipment is hard to replace cold subconsciously induce more caring.
At least the existence of this post will make "discovery" easier for the next person who has to do this task (if they know to look for it, at least). Perhaps there are some steps in the process that are best taught instead of climbed, or vice-versa, and the challenge is to figure out the right mixture?
(I recall a coding bootcamp I was a part of, where a careful balance of "look this up" and "ask the instructor" was required so that the instructor wouldn't be overwhelmed and people wouldn't waste an entire day fixing a chain of mistakes flowing from some trivial error.)
When I saw the title, the first things I thought of were Ramit Sethi's videos on negotiation and the CFAR income negotiation workshop. This seems more focused on promotions than raises, but are you aware of any meta-studies that examine specifically the effect of different types of negotiation strategies?
I agree that we should aspire to eventually appeal to the IQ 100 population with as many of our concepts as we can. I don't think we should use the identity-claim-but-no-deep-thought technique to do it.
I agree with avoiding identity-claim aspirations.
When I use the Ned Flanders example, what I'm thinking is:
I know Christians who say that belief in Jesus and being determined to love others will make life better, and they express this better-ness in their incredible patience and kindness--to the point where I wish I were equally patient and kind.
I think we could get to a point where Less Wrong members can say "living with a strong awareness of your own biases and a desire to improve yourself will make your life better", and express this better-ness by being good conversationalists, optimistic, and genuinely helpful to those with questions or problems--to the point where non-members wish they were equally cool/smart/fun/helpful, or whatever other values we hope to embody.
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Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl